


The Screams All Sound the Same

by Wolftraps (AlwaysBoth)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Healing, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Slow Build, au after season 2, some talk of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-20 23:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysBoth/pseuds/Wolftraps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's screaming, this girl. This girl who hates him, who wants to see him dead. He doesn't blame her. As far as she's concerned, he's her own personal Kate.</p><p>She's screaming, but it's different. Despair and pain, but none of the fear he hears in the others. The screams it seems like he always hears now. A collection that keeps growing as he keeps being unable to protect the people who matter.</p><p>Hers stand out. He knows her screams because they are his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Screams All Sound the Same

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chiomi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/gifts).



> Chiomi asked me for PTSD!fic, and finally I deliver.

Derek has had the nightmares for years. They started the night after the fire and he's had them every day since. Every day he's slept, at least. It was hardest in the beginning, when Laura was still consumed with grief and fear and rejecting her alpha status because it was just another reminder that they were all gone. Her emotions echoed through their bond and amplified the pain and terror and guilt he carried on his own. In those early days, he just wouldn't sleep. For weeks he would stay awake, thinking about them but not having to see their faces burning away like he did in the dreams. He would lose control, start shifting at the slightest provocation, but still Laura was stuck in her beta mentality. Her frustration with him sparked his own self-loathing.  
  
He passed out once, after three weeks of no sleep, and woke up in the charred remains of their home, coated in rabbit blood. After that, Laura finally decided to step up; as a big sister, if not an alpha. It wasn't safe in Beacon Hills and they would never move on if they stayed there, surrounded by memories. They went east, sticking to the unpopulated woods, the dreams becoming more manageable as they drew further away and Laura started to take her responsibilities as an alpha seriously. Once she stopped projecting, Derek regained control and they could brave cities again.  
  
Six years after the fire, though, he still woke gasping for breath, for air that wasn't dense with smoke, and clawing at his skin, trying to stifle the flames. He was miles from the fire when his family died, but he still watched them burn every night.  
  
None of that compares to what he's seen and felt since Peter became alpha.  
  
Peter gave him the images his mind fumbled to create, more horrifying than he ever could have imagined. Peter gave him memory of how it really felt to be burned alive and to watch your family burn around you. Peter gave him the feeling of real betrayal; betrayal by pack. And even though Kate is dead, her blood spilled on the ground where she murdered his family, Derek has never hated himself more.  
  
He stops sleeping again, even before he buries Peter beneath the house. There's no point in sleeping to watch them burn, he sees them in every corner, every shadow, every time he closes his eyes. He starts losing control again, too, and that might be an issue. He's losing the anger he's kept in a stranglehold for years and he's lost the pack that kept him sane.  
  
It's not safe to stay at the old house, since the hunters know he's been staying there, but Derek can't bring himself to leave. He should find a new place to stay. He should talk to Scott, explain his reasons, help him settle. He should pack his meager belongings into the Camaro and head east again. He doesn't. It wouldn't help this time. No matter how far he runs, he can't escape the memories his uncle planted. So he stays, wandering the house, pacing through memories room by room until he finds himself under the house again.  
  
He can't breathe down here. He doesn't really want to.  
  
Fire washes over the stone, devours the wood overhead. He can hear the roar, the crackle, but above all he can hear the screams. His father is trying to break down the door, his siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles claw at the walls and scream and scream and scream. His mother is on fire, flesh melting away beneath the flames, but she still drags herself across the room to snap his youngest brother's neck. One less scream fills the room.  
  
The loudest cry is still there, though, long past when the others die out, ringing through his skull, interrupted only by gasping breaths. Derek can't think past the pain, worse than the aconite bullet by far, but when he wakes up hours later and checks himself for burns, he thinks maybe that scream was his own.  
  
\------  
  
Pack, to Derek, has always meant safety, comfort, healing, home. Pack is protection. Pack is family. So after he's buried Peter and pulled himself from the ashes, he goes looking for one. He seeks out people as broken and drowning as he is. Isaac, whose home life is a nightmare. Erica, whose own body turns on her. Boyd, whose loneliness has left physical scars. He doesn't lie to them. He knows they're young and the danger he speaks of isn't quite real to them. But he says "This could kill you" and none of them hesitate. They're dead inside and he's offering them a chance at life. And, after, they hate and fear him when he tries to make sure they _stay_ alive.  
  
It helps for a while. The strength and stability of a pack. He can feel them, their pride when they do something right, their confidence, the slow drain of constant fear they've been carrying for much or all their lives. And the comfort of companionship in each other. Things turn sour quickly, though. Isaac gives into the aggression and hates himself for it. After the kanima and the epileptic relapse, Erica gets subdued and starts falling into despair. Boyd still often feels alone, apart from the others.  
  
He hears them all scream at some point. That same scream of pain and fear he hears each night.  
  
Derek tries to draw in Scott, who has adjusted better than he ever expected and can probably extend the care to Derek's betas that they're not getting from him. He just can't open himself up to them like that. It would all be over if one of them told him they felt what he did, that they dreamed of fire and woke smelling smoke and gasping for breath.  
  
He knows he's not so good at family these days.  
  
The dreams get worse again. He starts waking up not sure where he is. Little, random things spark panic.  
  
The day Erica walks in on one of his attacks, and all he sees is wavy blonde hair when he lashes out... that's when he knows it's over. It was foolish, trying to make a pack when he can't even keep himself together.  
  
After Lydia uses him to raise Peter, he spends a half an hour listening to his family scream and struggling to convince his lungs that the air he breathes is clear. He loses consciousness when his skin is burning and his throat is torn out.  
  
Erica and Boyd leave. Derek saw it coming, but the bond between them stretching taut and threatening to snap hurts all the same. The panic attacks and memories worsen the longer he's around Peter. Isaac is Derek's only saving grace, and that only because he starts hanging around Scott. Scott calms him, makes him feel cared about. When Isaac comes back to the apartment they now share, leaking contentment, Derek dreams his own dreams.  
  
He dreams of Laura, leaving him in the woods of Wisconsin to fend for himself. He dreams of ripping out Peter's throat. He dreams of Scott, betraying him, forcing him to bite Gerard. Mostly, he dreams about Kate. About her sadistic smile and mocking words and how badly he wanted to crawl out of his skin or actually set it on fire when she touched him.  
  
At least those nights the only screams he dreams are his own.  
  
\------  
  
She's screaming, this girl. This girl who hates him, who wants to see him dead. He doesn't blame her. As far as she's concerned, he's her own personal Kate.  
  
She's screaming, but it's different. Despair and pain, but none of the fear he hears in the others. The screams it seems like he always hears now. A collection that keeps growing as he keeps being unable to protect the people who matter.  
  
Hers stand out. He knows her screams because they are his own.  
  
She shoots him, and he lets her. It's not a pain from the old memories, so it doesn't pull them up. The only screams he hears are hers.  
  
She shoots him, and he lets her. Over and over. Her quiver is empty and he feels faint, but he doesn't want to blackout. He doesn't want to see and hear and feel the past as it haunts him. He wants to stay here and listen to her scream.  
  
Scott steps in, and she screams at him while Isaac drops down by Derek and starts removing the arrows. It hurts, and he can't look away from her and the tears on her face, and he almost wants to tell Isaac to stop.  
  
She's still crying, but her screams stop as Isaac pulls out the last arrow. The first of the wounds have already closed. Silently, Derek picks up each shaft and stands. There's some fear in her now, as he approaches, but she stands her ground and tries to stare him down. He knows those eyes, though, and he's learned not to turn away from them. If he hadn't, he'd never have looked in a mirror again.  
  
"I'm sorry," he says as he hands her the pile. Then he walks away, Isaac trailing behind.  
  
  
That night the air he gasps for is filled with wolfsbane while Scott howls in desperation and Kate whispers in his ear how she'll destroy everything he loves. There's another voice screaming with him, higher pitched, but just as lost and pained.  
  
\------  
  
Isaac has a hard week on the next full moon, and Derek knows. He can feel the stress and the anger and the pain, always the pain. He doesn't know what to do, though, how to help; because if he draws Isaac in, offers him that comfort, he'll only end up hurt even worse.  
  
Isaac dreams of his father and wakes up screaming. Derek doesn't hear him. He hears his father, his mother, his siblings and cousins.  
  
He hears Peter.  
  
He hears Scott.  
  
He hears all the packs he's thought he could have.  
  
The air is smoke and poison. It's pitch black and he can see the flames through his eyelids. He's paralyzed and drowning and clawing at his chest to let the air in because no matter how much he gasps for air he just gets water and poison and smoke.  
  
There's someone talking, but he can't hear them over the screams, and they hold him down, pull the claws from his chest, and fire spreads wherever they touch and his bones break under the force of the bat being swung at him and there's a line of 'No. Don't. Don't touch me. God, please. Stop.' squirming up his stomach in the trail of Kate's tongue. He lashes out.  
  
The restraints are gone now, but he still can't move. His body does, jerking as he can't hold his breath any longer and the water floods in, but it won't respond to anything he tries to do. His vision's dark. His body aches and he won't seem to heal. There's a rushing in his ears.  
  
He jerks again and thinks he's probably dying. Would it be so bad?  
  
His limbs settle and the rushing dies slowly. There are other sounds he can't make sense of. His eyes focus on the familiar ceiling of his loft. It still sways a bit, lightens and darkens again.  
  
"I don't know what to do," someone says. They sound distressed. "He's not breathing."  
  
He's not breathing. He- _Derek_ isn't breathing. His chest is burning. He gasps and the air floods in and it's sweet and it hurts and it smells like blood and fear. It's not all his.  
  
Derek looks to the side and finds Isaac on the floor, back to the wall, with healing gashes along his arms and chest. He's on the phone, with Scott from the sound, and he looks terrified.  
  
Derek caused that.  
  
He wants to say something or do something. Tell Isaac he's sorry, that it's okay, that he never meant to lash out and it's not Isaac's fault. He wants to offer comfort. His voice won't work, though, and his limbs feel too heavy to move, and he doesn't deserve the reassurance he would get in return.  
  
So he stares at the ceiling and stays silent, trying not to listen to Isaac's phone call. He's on the verge of sleep when the shuffling starts. There's a soft hand on his arm and a questioning whine of his name, but he can't seem to respond. Isaac's presence vanishes quickly. The next morning, while Isaac is at school, Derek packs a small bag and goes back to the old house. He'll keep paying the bills and stopping by to be sure the kitchen is well stocked, but it's better for Isaac to have the apartment to himself for now. He has Scott to help him anyway.  
  
\------  
  
The next time she finds him, he's actually doing alright. He goes for a run in the woods, fleeing the ghosts in the house and Peter's still-living voice. She falls into step with him and he slows to match her pace. Neither of them speaks for a few miles, until she needs a break.  
  
"Scott told me," she says, "about my mother trying to kill him and you attacking her to save him." Derek nods, but doesn't say anything. Instead, he looks her over, trying to find a trace of Kate in her features. It's not easy and he's grateful for that. "I know- I know my mom killed herself because of our family's rules. I know it happened because she was doing something horrible." She takes a breath, and then another, and finally looks at him, though he can't bring himself to hold her gaze. "I know this, but... She was my _mom,_ and I can't help blaming you."  
  
"I understand," Derek says. Because he does. He blames himself, too.  
  
"What happened last time. I can't promise it won't happen again."  
  
"I understand," he says again, tracking the flight of a hawk overhead and the incoming clouds. It's going to be a miserable, grey evening. He tries to avoid looking at her.  
  
"Why-" She pauses, her voice gets suddenly small. "Why did you let me? Why didn't you fight back?" She's still looking at him. He shrugs.  
  
"I understand," he says, then continues his run before the rains come.  
  
\------------  
  
The alpha pack's invasion is a disaster. One Derek doesn't know how any of them make it through.  
  
Some of them don't.  
  
Boyd comes back, but Erica's screams join those of the fallen, permanently embedded in his mind. So do Peter's. He categorizes them now, the fallen and the living, but it's a meaningless distinction. They all sound the same.  
  
Derek spends half their major battles trying to keep a grip on reality so he can fight the enemy and not the ghosts that haunt him. He knows Isaac is afraid. Of or for him, Derek's not sure, but he keeps his distance. Let Scott have the pack. He'll take care of them, at least. Between Deaton and Stiles he has enough knowledge and resourcefulness to teach them whatever they need to know. They don't need Derek.  
  
Not like he needs them.  
  
Since the day he left the apartment, he's felt the pack bond with Isaac getting weaker, and he hasn't tried to hold on to it. He never tries rebuilding the bond with Boyd after his return either. It's better for them so he doesn't project, but without them his control is slipping again.  
  
He's all but lost the anger he used to have, that used to keep him human. It's been consumed by the guilt. But the guilt just makes him want to become an animal. To live alone in the woods so his attention won't get yet another person killed. Some days he wanders the town, though they all look at him with suspicion and an awkward appreciation, and wonders how it is to actually be human. To him, it's a learned trait and all the more elusive for it. Those days he can usually keep the ghosts at bay. The days he goes to the high school sports meets and games and watches his would-be pack be normal teenagers, too.  
  
He can't go running in the woods anymore, though. Not during the day at least. Instinct takes over and he becomes the hunter. He can't stay in the house, either. Memories are everywhere, threatening to pull him back under. He can't sleep and he knows it's only a matter of time before he slips.  
  
\------  
  
He's been awake for a week and a half when it happens. He blacks out, starts running on instinct. When he comes back to himself he smells blood and pain and damp and ash. He smells sweat and flowers and steel. It's dark, but not so dark he can't see. He wishes he couldn't, though it wouldn't make any difference. He knows where he is.  
  
He's home.  
  
The iron grate is at his back, and he's not tethered, but it feels like he is. There's heat at his back as he can feel the fire grow, pain burning its way out from the arrows in his shoulder and leg. He can't move to get them out so he can start healing, just closes his eyes and shakes and feels the blood dripping down. The fire is spreading, smoke filling up the room, and he tries to hold his breath against it until the screaming starts.  
  
He hasn't been down here in over a month and it all seems so much worse for it. His lungs start burning from lack of air and he gasps in a breath only to choke on the smoke. Coughs wrack his chest, aggravating the arrow, and he tilts over just enough to avoid vomiting on himself. It's practically water. He can't remember the last time he ate. The flames creep closer and the screams grow louder and he wheezes as his eyes sting and water, but he doesn't fight it.  
  
He's long since given up fighting it. He knows it's not real, but neither are werewolves, right?  
  
Someone swears. The one who smells like steel and wolfsbane and something sweet. He can't figure out who it is. Not one of the usual ghosts, they all smell like burning. Cold hands pull him upright and he can feel the arrows sliding out of his flesh. The wounds don't close right away, though. His body doesn't have the energy.  
  
"Oh my God," the new ghost says, practically a whisper. "What is happening? Derek?" The voice feels familiar, almost settling. He breathes deep once, twice, and starts blacking out again. " _Derek?_ " she yells, and now he recognizes her.  
  
He knows that scream; it is his own.  
  
\------  
  
When Derek comes to again, he smells Stiles' Jeep.  
  
The girl is still nearby, crying, angry. It's soothing in a way he knows it shouldn't be. He falls into a dreamless sleep.  
  
\------  
  
Derek wakes up at Deaton's. There's an IV attached to his arm, and the vet isn't there, but the girl who smells of steel and wolfsbane and shares his screams is. She's sitting in the chair he's waited in himself several times.  
  
"Derek," she says when she notices he's awake.  
  
"Allison," he says back. "Did you bring me here?"  
  
"You passed out. I don't even think you knew I was there. It was like, you went somewhere else... I called Stiles and he brought his Jeep." He nods but doesn't know what else to say. He could thank her, but it would be insincere. Most of him wishes she's just shot him in the heart and fed wolfsbane through the hole.  
  
They sit in silence for a few minutes.  
  
"What happened?" It takes a moment for him to realize he was the one who spoke. Likely he'll never grow accustomed to his body doing things without his permission.  
  
"I went for a run. Found you, in full wolf form, chasing a jogger. I shot you twice to get your attention, but... you didn't try to attack me. You just went back to your house. I followed you to that room and you changed back, but- you- you kept gasping for breath and you didn't seem to know I was there, even when I took the arrows out. And they wouldn't heal. I didn't know what else to do after you passed out." Derek nods again in understanding. He's been expecting something like this to happen for months.  
  
"Stiles said it sounded like you had a panic attack." He doesn't look at her; doesn't say anything else. These fits aren't panic. They're ghosts, haunting him. Reminders of how he ruins everything he touches. She leaves after a while.  
  
\------  
  
Derek stays at the clinic for forty-one hours. Once he's managed to choke down some food, his healing abilities finally kick in. He's half tempted to fight it, to keep the wounds open and bleeding, but he doesn't think he has the focus.  
  
Others come through and ask about him. Stiles and Scott, Isaac and Boyd. He can feel the pack bonds flare as they come and bleed worry. It hurts that they care. He doesn't speak to any of them, asks Deaton not to let them through.  
  
She comes once more before he leaves.  
  
"Where will you go? she asks. He shrugs. Chances are he'll end up back at the old house again. "Just so you know, Isaac's staying with Scott. He says the apartment doesn't feel safe anymore, now that it doesn't smell like you." She gets up and walks out.  
  
\------  
  
The apartment smells like pack. Like Isaac and Boyd and even a bit of Scott and Stiles. It hurts, but not as much as the old house. The apartment doesn't smell of smoke.  
  
He goes two weeks without an attack. It's easier, too, being back in the city. Surrounded by humans, he can focus on them to keep his control while he runs.  
  
He still can't bring himself to use the gas stove.  
  
A month after he moves back in, he comes home to find her there, sitting on his couch, carving something into the coffee table with an arrowhead. He shuts the door loudly and she startles, looking guilty for a moment before apparently thinking better of it.  
  
"You weren't home," she says.  
  
"No," he agrees.  
  
"I let myself in."  
  
"I see that." They're both silent for a moment, staring at each other, assessing. She looks as tired as he feels. "You want coffee?" She nods. There's almost no point in him drinking it, his body metabolizes it too fast, but he has an espresso machine and puts two extra shots in his and is beyond thankful for the placebo effect.  
  
It should be awkward, sitting across from her, drinking coffee after she's invaded his space, but it's more comfortable than he imagines it would be with anyone else. He thinks maybe it's because the only way he can hurt her more than he already has is if she and hers attack first. There's no love lost between them. It's not like his would-be pack, who would end up hurt because he cares.  
  
"Why are you here?"  
  
"Just checking in." A lie. He stares at her, raising his eyebrows to express his skepticism. She gets angry. "Last time I saw you you were losing control. I don't think checking up on you is unwarranted. We need to know you're not hurting anyone." Not a lie, but not why she's there either.  
  
"Did you search the closet for skeletons? Check the fridge for human hearts? That was one incident and it hasn't happened again. So is there something else you need or can you leave now?"  
  
She looks at him for another moment, then becomes very interested in her mug. The anger doesn't come back. "I still hate you."  
  
"I know."  
  
"I- I kind of hate myself, too." He doesn't say anything. "When you get... like you were. What do you see? What do you hear? Because I know you couldn't see or hear me." And somehow it's nothing to tell her what he can't tell anyone else.  
  
"My family. Screaming." Her face falls further, she drains the last of the coffee and leaves. The carving on the coffee table, when he looks, is just some lines. Maybe the beginnings of an outline, but nothing significant yet.  
  
\------  
  
It's not the last time she shows up at his apartment. Sometimes she knocks, others she breaks in while he's out. She continues carving those times, until he gets back. He never looks at it, but he also never tells her to stop. Just like he doesn't tell her not to come. Some days they argue about it, most he just holds out the hope that this time she'll meet him with a crossbow.  
  
She'll spend hours there, and often they don't talk at all. Sometimes, though, she'll tell him things; things he's sure she doesn't tell anyone else.  
  
"My dad doesn't trust me," she says once. "I don't blame him."  
  
"They're training me to take over," another. "I don't think I want to."  
  
"I'm probably never getting back with Scott."  
  
"No one talks to me at school anymore. I'm jealous of them. I wish I could still be that ignorant."  
  
"I hate you." Always that one. "I still hate you."  
  
For a while, he's only haunted at night or whenever he sleeps. His control largely returns, though. He tries not to think about what his anchor is now. Then the man in the apartment next door burns something, and all Derek can smell is charred flesh. All he breathes is smoke. Someone grabs him; he lashes out. She screams. She also pulls a crossbow on him before he even realizes he caught her. There are a few red lines running down her left arm.  
  
They stand still for a couple minutes, both waiting for the other to attack.  
  
"I'm sorry," Derek says, his throat still feeling full of smoke. "We should bandage your arm." She nods, after a time, and lowers the bow. There's a first aid kit in the bathroom that he knows he never bought. It was just there after he moved in again, smelling very faintly of Stiles. He cleans and bandages the scratches and she watches him all the while with an unreadable expression.  
  
He thinks this is probably the end. She'll go home and her father will find out and then it's game over; Derek loses. He doesn't have the strength to run anymore.  
  
She doesn't leave, though. She starts target practice on his door with a page torn from her notebook. She drew a wolf on it. He should probably stop her, but he'd never really expected to get his security deposit back anyway. Eventually he orders pizza and they eat together in silence.  
  
"You don't know what today is, do you?" she asks from her perch on the couch as he's getting rid of the trash. If there's something special about it, then he really doesn't.  
  
"No." She smirks.  
  
"It's Thanksgiving. Come on, tell me what you're thankful for." He doesn't have a response. "Yeah, me either." And he doesn't know why she's not with her father, but it kills him a bit to hear her say that. Because he had a part in making her this way, and at her age, at least he'd had Laura. "I still hate you."  
  
She disappears at some point. When he finally heads to bed, he finds her there, asleep, wrapped up in his sheets.  
  
He sleeps on the couch.  
  
\------  
  
She doesn't come around for a week after that and he keeps expecting Chris Argent to show up with a shotgun. He never does, though.  
  
Still, for the first few days of her absence, Derek dreams his own dreams at night. Until the smell of steel and wolfsbane and something sweet fades from his sheets. Then, one day, she's back on his couch, carving up his table, telling him she hates him, and it's all back to normal.  
  
\------  
  
He emerges from an incident to the smell of steel and wolfsbane and something sweet, and he knows she's there. She's talking to him, but he can't hear her, not over the screams. And it's not enough, not enough. He needs to _hear_ her.  
  
He needs to hear her.  
  
The things he chokes out are cruel. Useless; child; deserved what they got; psychopaths; just like them. It works, though. She can't tell he's lying, so she gets angry and screams and it drowns out all the others, until finally they're gone. But then, so is she. And she doesn't even say she hates him on the way out.  
  
She doesn't come for a couple weeks this time, longer than after he scratched her. He's not sure why it bothers him. Then, on New Year's Eve, he comes home to find her there again. He doesn't know what to say, so he just takes a seat across from her and sits in silence until she's ready.  
  
"I started to forget," she says quietly. "I started to forget that I really do hate you."  
  
"You weren't gone as long as this, last time," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say. He can't respond in kind.  
  
"Last time there were scratches. My dad kept me away." Truth.  
  
"I'm sorry." Because there's nothing else he can say.  
  
"I don't care." Lie.  
  
"Yes, you do."  
  
"I don- okay, I do. Just... _why?_ Why would you do that? Say those things? After all this time." Her jaw is clenched and her eyes shine and he can tell she's hurt but trying to stay strong. And she is; so much stronger than him.  
  
"I needed to hear you," he admits.  
  
"I was talking."  
  
"I know. But I couldn't hear you. You-" He hesitates to give her this, this power over him, but he thinks her going away now, again, might be worse than whatever she could do with it. "You're the only thing I've found that can draw me out. Your- when you scream, I can hear you, even when I can't hear anything else."  
  
There's silence for a moment, as she stares at him and he avoids her eye. "Why not tell me to scream?"  
  
He shakes his head. "It wouldn't work if you were afraid. They're all afraid."  
  
She doesn't say anything to that, doesn't ask who "they" are, but she starts carving the table again. He still hasn't looked at it since that first time.  
  
"My therapist suggested I try art as a form of self-expression," she explains, or at least he assumes it's meant to be an explanation. "Have you ever considered it?"  
  
"Art?"  
  
"Therapy."  
  
  
She wanders off shortly after midnight. He doesn't have a tv or anything, they can't watch the ball drop (he remembers being in Times Square with Laura last year, the night before she came back to Beacon Hills) but he lives close enough to a couple bars that they can both hear the countdown.  
  
When he goes to look shortly after that, he finds her sleeping in his bed again.  
  
\------  
  
She turns eighteen a couple weeks later and starts spending more time at his place; sometimes during school, sometimes at night when she takes over his bed, sometimes after training with her father when she is still bruised and angry and starts shooting arrows at his door without a word. Her things start showing up around the apartment and staying there.  
  
She didn't come over on the anniversary of Laura's death, and she doesn't come on that of his family's, and he spends those days in a haze of pain and fear and screaming, but it's for the best, he thinks. She does come on the anniversary of Kate's death, though, and he finally can't resist asking anymore.  
  
"Why do you come here?" For a while he doesn't think she'll answer.  
  
But she does, hesitantly. "My mom, my aunt, they were both filled with so much hate, and they did such awful things because of it. I can feel it, sometimes, that _hate_. I can feel it taking over me, and it scares me. It scares me _so much_. Sometimes I can feel it filling me, and I think that maybe I should end it. A lot of people would be a lot safer if I wasn't around with that hate in my heart, ticking like a timebomb." She sighs and grits her teeth, stabbing her carving knife into the coffee table. "I can't, though. I'm angry; at myself, at everything. And I _hate_. And I feel like everything is spiraling down and I'm just waiting to hit the bottom, wondering how far down it can go before I can't take it anymore. But, right now, I can't take that step myself. I guess I'm just waiting for a push."  
  
"What are you trying to say? That you'll hang around until one of us kills the other?" She shrugs, looking up at him with stubborn, sad eyes. "I don't want to kill you."  
  
"I know," she says, fiddling with the end of the knife, rocking it back and forth but not taking it out. "I don't actually want to kill you either. But we both want to die."  
  
\------  
  
Boyd shows up in February, on Erica's birthday, and they talk. They talk about loss, about pack, about Derek's responsibility and his absence. Boyd is angry, which Derek understands, but he's only angry about Derek shutting him and Isaac out, which Derek doesn't understand. There's so much else he could be angry about, blame Derek for. His crap alpha-ing, not preparing them better, not looking for them harder, not finding them sooner, not _protecting them_ ; all things Derek would understand, all things he blames himself for.  
  
The pack bond between them flares up as they speak, and maybe it's a bad idea, but Derek needs _something;_ something to hold on for. So he agrees to a pack meeting, just him, Boyd and Isaac, on Saturday, so they can try to work things out.  
  
Boyd stays for another hour, catching him up on their lives, all the little but important things he's missed. As he's leaving, he points a thumb back at the coffee table. "It's cool," is all he says. Allison was still working on it the day before, so it's not finished, and Derek isn't ready to look.  
  
\------  
  
They talk more now. They've long since told each other their secrets, given each other power over them. They know how to hit where it hurts, so everything else comes a little easier. When she asks about his nightmares, he tells her, and when she comes over wound up enough to start shooting up his door (with an actual target on it now), she'll talk out her frustration as well.  
  
The nightmares are still steady, but the attacks are rarer; enough that he's willing to let himself get closer to his pack. He hedges when Isaac asks about moving back in, but doesn't say actually say no, and if either of them notice the smell of steel and wolfsbane and something sweet lingering in the apartment, neither says anything.  
  
One night in March, while the rain pours down but the wind is mild, she comes to the apartment. She's quiet and soaked to the bone and shivering as she stands in his room. Her hair clings to her pale face and somehow it's hard not to brush it back, to gather her in his arms and warm her up. He doesn't think it would be welcome, though. He knows what day it is. Instead, he pulls himself out of bed and goes to grab a towel.  
  
When he gets back, her wet clothes are on the floor and she's wearing one of his henleys, sitting on the edge of his bed with her knees pulled up to her chest under the shirt. He sits beside her, half a foot between them, and she takes the towel with a quiet "thank you."  
  
"I still hate you," she whispers after a time. Her heartbeat is steady.  
  
"I know," he says, but she shakes her head.  
  
"No. You don't. I want to hate you. It's so much easier when I hate you, and I hate you now because you make it so hard to do. You listen to me and you let me destroy your things and steal your bed and eat your food. You bandage me up when I come in all battered. And you apologize every time she comes up even though it's _not your fault._ "  
  
"Allison-" But she doesn't let him say anything further.  
  
"And I'm scared. I'm afraid of what happens if I let it go. What if all that hate just stays in me, building up until one day I end up just like them? What if I end up killing someone? Like Scott or- or you? Someone who doesn't deserve it. All because I'm so blinded by hate."  
  
"You won't," he assures her, and she scoots in closer, leaning against his side.  
  
"I wish I could believe that... It's been a year." She chokes a little on her words. "She killed herself a year ago, and I think I understand, a little, why, but... sometimes I hate her for it, too. For doing this to me. And then I hate myself for thinking that. She- she tried to tell me," she's starting to cry now, and he puts an arm across her shoulder to pull her in closer. "She asked to talk to me and I was so mad about all these stupid little things that I just blew her off.  
  
"I feel- I still feel like the worst daughter ever for that. That that's the last thing I said to her her. That I wouldn't spare two minutes for her. How do you get past that _guilt?_ " She's not actually asking, and it's probably not the right time to tell her, but he answers anyway.  
  
"I never did," Derek says. And she looks up at him with wide eyes and tear stains on her cheeks and part of him wants to pull her in and do things he shouldn't. "I had a fight with my parents that night. It was the full moon, a family reunion kind of, and they wanted me home. But I had a lacrosse game, and there was this girl, this woman. I thought I was in love with her. She promised to come watch me play and then we would go somewhere, alone."  
  
He swallows hard. "Laura took me to the game, and stayed to watch with her friends. But when I got off the field at the end of the game, the woman wasn't there. She- Laura felt it, when our parents died. We were barely on the road home. When we got there, they were already gone. And I could smell her there... I never stopped thinking about it. What if I'd listened, stayed. If I hadn't been so naive. But nothing will change what happened."  
  
When she doesn't respond, her heartbeat and breathing don't change, and she doesn't even twitch, he knows it was the wrong decision to tell her. So he takes his arm from her shoulders and makes to leave, to let her have his bed again, but she latches on before he can even stand.  
  
"The woman," she says. "Kate?" It hardly sounds like a question. There's no shock or feeling behind it. But he nods, and Allison pulls him back beside her, resting her head on his shoulder. Neither says another word until her breathing grows slow and steady. As gently as he can, Derek lifts her form, solid though slight, and sets her down across the bed, pulling a sheet up to her waist.  
  
"Wait," she calls before he gets far. And he waits. "Stay here? Not... I don't want to be alone." And he stays, lying next to her and letting her use his shoulder as a pillow. He falls asleep to the steady beat of her heart and dreams only of inconsequential things that he won't remember come morning.  
  
\------  
  
She's still there when he wakes up, alert already and watching him with with eyes that seem a little less hopeless than they usually do. There's no precedent in their relationship for this, so he just stares back, waiting for her to make the first move.  
  
"Did you sleep okay?" she whispers, and he nods, because he did, better than he has in a long time. "Me too."  
  
There's a small smile, tugging at the edges of her mouth. And then she rests her warm palm on his cheek and leans in for a kiss; a soft, chaste thing that is barely a touch of lip to lip but tears down their entire relationship up to this point and begins rebuilding it.  
  
"Thank you. For being here," she says quietly as she pulls back, and then she crawls out of bed, still wearing his shirt, and wanders off.  
  
\------  
  
Things change after that, in small ways that build up and make all the difference in the world. Allison practically moves into the apartment, but she also starts spending time with people other than him and her father. At some point, she even makes peace with his pack, though he's not sure when or how.  
  
She starts smiling again.  
  
And when he starts drowning in the screams and feeling the flames, she's there. She can't always draw him out, but together they figure out the things that set it off. And when he comes back to himself he's not alone.  
  
  
Derek comes home one day, as the weather is getting warmer and his pack is preparing for the end of the school year, to find her there already. It's not a surprise, and neither, anymore, is the smile she greets him with.  
  
Her hair is disheveled and she's wearing an old shirt of his and there's a streak of white paint across her cheek and her eyes are alive. And he allows himself a moment to think her beautiful and wonder how they got where they are.  
  
"I finished it," she announces, grinning with accomplishment, and he doesn't have to ask what she means. He nods and steps forward, and suddenly she snaps out of her euphoria, looking around at the mess she has spread over the area surrounding the coffee table. "Oh my gosh. Let me just pick up a bit!"  
  
Gathering a few things in her arms, she rushes off toward the kitchen and he steps further in to finally see what he's been avoiding for over half a year.  
  
He recognizes the basic design immediately, has seen it on the pendant that still hangs around her neck, but it's different here. Carved in a sort of tribal style, all swirls and spikes,[ this wolf howls to the moon above](http://wolftraps.tumblr.com/post/55998327671/flat-version-of-allisons-tattoo-from-my-tattoo). And it's not a monster, not a beast; it's beautiful.  
  
"Do you like it?" Allison asks, slipping her fingers between his to hold his hand lightly as she stands beside him. "It's a reminder to myself. To not hate without cause or hurt the undeserving."  
  
They admire her work for a few more seconds before she turns to him. "Well? What do you think?"  
  
"It's okay, I guess," he says, and tries to fight back a smirk, "for a carved up table. I'm just wondering what of my property you're going to destroy next."  
  
Her jaw drops in offended disbelief, and she punches him in the arm so it actually hurts a bit.  
  
"Asshole!" she says. "I hate you." But there's laughter in her voice and a jump in her heart rate and he knows that, no, she really doesn't.  
  
  
Derek falls asleep that night in sheets that smell of steel and wolfsbane and something sweet and has not a single nightmare.

**Author's Note:**

> Also on Tumblr at [wolftraps](http://wolftraps.tumblr.com)


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